Abstract State Machine (ASM) theory is a well-known state-based formal method to analyze and specify software and hardware systems. As in other state-based formal methods, the proposed modeling languages for ASMs still lack easy-to-comprehend abstractions to structure state and behavior aspects of specifications. Modern object-oriented languages offer a variety of advanced language constructs, and most of them either offer interfaces, mixins, or traits in addition to classes and inheritance. Our goal is to investigate these language constructs in the context of state-based formal methods using ASMs as a representative of this kind of formal methods. We report on a controlled experiment with 105 participants to study the understandability of the three language constructs in the context of ASMs. Our hypotheses are influenced by the debate of object-oriented communities. We hypothesized that the understandability (measured by correctness and duration variables) shows significantly better understanding for interfaces and traits compared to mixins, as well as at least a similar or better understanding for traits compared to interfaces. The results indicate that understandability of interfaces and traits show a similar good understanding, whereas mixins shows a poorer understanding. We found a significant difference for the correctness of understanding comparing interfaces with mixins.

摘要状态机（ASM）理论是一种众所周知的基于状态的形式化方法，用于分析和指定软件和硬件系统。与其他基于状态的形式化方法一样，为ASM提出的建模语言仍然缺乏对结构状态和规范行为方面的易于理解的抽象。现代的面向对象语言提供了各种高级语言构造，其中大多数都提供了类，继承以及接口，混合或特性。我们的目标是在使用ASM作为这种形式化方法代表的基于状态的形式化方法的背景下研究这些语言构造。我们报告了一个有105名参与者的对照实验，以研究ASM上下文中这三种语言结构的可理解性。我们的假设受到面向对象社区辩论的影响。我们假设，可理解性（通过正确性和持续时间变量衡量）与mixin相比，对界面和特性​​的理解显着更好，并且与界面相比，对特性的理解至少或相似或更好。结果表明，界面和特征的可理解性显示出相似的良好理解，而混合素则显示出较差的理解。我们发现，了解将接口与Mixins进行比较的正确性存在显着差异。以及与界面相比至少对特征有相似或更好的理解。结果表明，界面和特征的可理解性显示出相似的良好理解，而混合素则显示出较差的理解。我们发现，了解将接口与Mixins进行比较的正确性存在显着差异。以及与界面相比至少对特征有相似或更好的理解。结果表明，界面和特征的可理解性显示出相似的良好理解，而混合素则显示出较差的理解。我们发现，了解将接口与Mixins进行比较的正确性存在显着差异。